Recent Editor's Soapbox

Protect Yourself

by snoofle
in Editor's Soapbox
on 2017-12-05

We lend the soapbox to snoofle today, to dispense a combination of career and financial advice. I've seen too many of my peers sell their lives for a handful of magic beans. Your time is too valuable to waste for no reward. -- Remy

There is a WTF that far too many people make with their retirement accounts at work. I've seen many many people get massively financially burned. A friend recently lost a huge amount of money from their retirement account when the company went under, which prompted me to write this to help you prevent it from happening to you.

The housing bubble that led up to the 2008 financial collapse was caused by overinflated housing values coming back down to reality. People had been given mortgages far beyond what they could afford using traditional financial norms, and when the value of their homes came back down to realistic values, they couldn't afford their mortgages and started missing payments, or worse, defaulted. This left the banks and brokerages that were holding the mortgage-backed-securities with billions in cash flow, but upside down on the balance sheet. When it crossed a standard threshold, they went under. Notably Bear Stearns and Lehman. Numerous companies (AIG, Citi, etc.) that invested in these MBS also nearly went under.